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A Danish Diplomat in Constantinople During the Armenian Genocide Matthias Bjørnlund Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal Volume 1 | 2006 Issue 2 | Article 8 “When the Cannons Talk, the Diplomats Must Be Silent”: A Danish Diplomat in Constantinople during the Armenian Genocide Matthias Bjørnlund Abstract. The ne voy Carl Ellis Wandel was the sole Danish diplomatic representative in Constantinople before, during, and after World War I, and between 1914 and 1925 he wrote hundreds of detailed reports on the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, as well as on related subjects. This article analyzes and contextualizes some of his most important reports, showing how these hitherto unknown sources contribute to the understanding of vital aspects of the Armenian Genocide, not least concerning the ongoing scholarly debate between ‘‘intentionalist’’ and ‘‘structuralist’’ interpretations of the event and concerning the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians as a particularly radical part of a Young Turk project of Turkification. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp Recommended Citation Bjørnlund, Matthias (2006) "“When the Cannons Talk, the Diplomats Must Be Silent”: A Danish Diplomat in Constantinople during the Armenian Genocide," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 1: Iss. 2: Article 8. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol1/iss2/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ‘‘When the Cannons Talk, the Diplomats Must Be Silent’’: A Danish Diplomat in Constantinople during the Armenian Genocide Matthias Bjørnlund Copenhagen, Denmark The envoy Carl Ellis Wandel was the sole Danish diplomatic representative in Constantinople before, during, and after World War I, and between 1914 and 1925 he wrote hundreds of detailed reports on the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, as well as on related subjects. This article analyzes and contextualizes some of his most important reports, showing how these hitherto unknown sources contribute to the understanding of vital aspects of the Armenian Genocide, not least concerning the ongoing scholarly debate between ‘‘intentionalist’’ and ‘‘structuralist’’ interpretations of the event and concerning the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians as a particularly radical part of a Young Turk project of Turkification. From the time of the Abdul Hamid massacres of 1894 to 1896—the systematic annihilation of some 100,000 to 300,000 Ottoman Armenians,1 combined with the forced Islamization or displacement of several hundred thousands more2—the persecution of this Christian minority had a significant impact on a broad range of leading public figures, as well as on the general public, in the Western world.3 This was also true in Denmark, where public figures raised awareness of the Armenian atrocities and their political implications through speeches, articles, books, and organizations: secular Danish-Jewish intellectuals Georg Brandes (1842–1927) and A˚ ge Meyer Benedictsen (1866–1927) exposed the indifference of the European governments to the sufferings of the Armenians4 and founded Danske Armeniervenner (DA, ‘‘Danish Friends of Armenians’’), respectively, as a direct consequence of the massacres.5 From the other end of the spectrum, bishop and minister of cultural affairs H.V. Styhr (1838–1905), in 1897, denounced what he called Abdul Hamid’s ‘‘holy war of extermination.’’6 Also, from 1900 onward, a number of Danish missionaries and relief workers went to work among Ottoman Armenians, in close cooperation with German, American, and Scandinavian colleagues, and some of these Danes became important witnesses to the extermination of the Armenians. One such person was Karen Jeppe (1876–1935), a schoolteacher and DA relief worker in Urfa from 1903–1919, who in 1921 became one of three members of the Commission of Inquiry for the Protection of Women and Children in the Near East from her base in Aleppo, Syria. This League of Nations commission was established in 1920 to deal with the problem of the tens of thousands of mainly Armenian women and children who had survived the genocide, many of them only to be forcibly converted to Islam, and were still kept in captivity in the Matthias Bjørnlund, ‘‘‘When the Cannons Talk, the Diplomats Must Be Silent’’: A Danish Diplomat in Constantinople during the Armenian Genocide.’’’ Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, 2 (September 2006): 197–224. ß 2006 Genocide Studies and Prevention. Genocide Studies and Prevention 1:2 September 2006 Turkish and Arabic areas of the former Ottoman Empire.7 Another such person was Maria Jacobsen (1882–1960), a missionary and nurse working for Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere (KMA, ‘‘Women Missionary Workers’’), who was stationed in Harput (Kharpert) in the vilayet of Mamouret-ul-Aziz from the fall of 1907 until 1919. Both women witnessed every aspect of the Armenian Genocide—death marches, massacres, starvation, resistance, forced Islamization—from their respective geographical positions in the Ottoman Empire; and still, under these extremely difficult conditions, they managed to save the lives of literally thousands.8 Persons like Jacobsen and Jeppe were thus in an ideal position to give accurate accounts of the implementation of the genocide on the local and regional levels, but when it came to giving accounts of the overall political, economic, and ideological framework for the genocide, no Western observers was better suited than the diplomats in Constantinople. A Danish Diplomat in Constantinople: Carl Ellis Wandel At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Denmark declared neutrality. But, the fear among the government and the general population that Germany would occupy some or all of the small country as a preventive measure to secure access through the Danish straits led to the Danish neutrality policy toward Germany being declared ‘‘benevolent.’’ It also had the effect of temporarily diverting interest from matters concerning, for instance, the plight of the Ottoman Armenian population some 2,000 miles away. But for Danes stationed in the Ottoman Empire during the war, the organized persecution of the Armenians was a tangible reality from the very beginning. One unknown, but important, Danish observer was Carl Ellis Wandel (1871–1940), who made up the entire diplomatic staff of the Danish legation in Constantinople (Istanbul) from 1914 to 1925. Carl Ellis Wandel was born in Copenhagen and was commercially trained as a merchant in the family wine-importing business. When he was appointed minister (i.e., envoy) and head of the Danish legation in Constantinople in the summer of 1914, he was already an experienced diplomat. While running the family’s wine cork factory in Lisbon, he had served as consul general in that city from 1904–1909, and when he moved to Argentina in 1909, he went within a few years from consul general in Buenos Aires to minister and full-time diplomat there until 1913, when it was decided that he should be transferred to the Ottoman Empire.9 Wandel took over the responsibility of dealing with official Danish relations from the Swedish legation, most likely as part of a drive for Danish trade interests in an area that was gaining increasing significance in Europe as a producer of raw materials as well as a purchaser of Western products. Judging by the hundreds of confidential reports he sent to the Danish foreign ministry from 1914 onward, now held in the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen, Wandel was a thorough and conscientious diplomat, analyzing the social and political developments in the Ottoman Empire in a knowledgeable, usually detached, and often very detailed way, with a constant eye to the possible effects these developments could have on Danish trade interests in the region. What makes Wandel an especially important and credible witness to developments in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, including the Armenian Genocide, is a combination of several factors. First, he was a neutral observer from a neutral country—or, more precisely, a country whose government, not least its powerful foreign minister, Erik Scavenius, insisted on upholding the abovementioned 198 A Danish Diplomat in Constantinople during the Armenian Genocide ‘‘benevolent neutrality’’ toward neighboring Germany and her allies.10 Scavenius’s general stance was to not blame anything on any of the warring parties, since he saw the war itself as an ‘‘uncontrollable machine that crushes everything.’’11 He was certainly not a person to let potentially ‘‘controversial’’ considerations, such as a bias toward a persecuted minority in the Ottoman Empire, influence Danish foreign policy. In fact, when the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian foreign ministries, through their respective royal courts, received an official request from the national Armenian delegation in Paris in April 1918 to intervene on behalf of the surviving Armenians in Armenia, who were being severely persecuted by Turkish troops following the withdrawal of the Russian army, the apparently unanimous answer from these neutral nations was that ‘‘nothing would be done.’’12 Second, Wandel’s status as a diplomat from a ‘‘harmless’’ country (i.e., a small, neutral country without imperialistic ambitions) undoubtedly further enhanced his ability to gain the trust of the large number of influential political players he had
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